The case is made that voter ID would be a royal pain

Thursday

Mar 31, 2011 at 12:01 AMDec 12, 2018 at 9:13 AM

I want to tell you one more thing about the Texas House marathon debate last week about the voter ID bill. I want to tell you this for two reasons. One, it was an interesting exchange, and two, because I sat in the House for about 14 hours and I am entitled to get one more column out of it.

It involves an illuminating dialogue, more than nine hours into the House session last Wednesday, on a topic about which we all are aware: Texas is big, and there are places where lots of people live and there are places where not so many people live.

And cuisine differs from place to place. More on that later.

On the House chamber's front microphone, offering what was Amendment 44, was Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine. On the back microphone, trying to help Gallego make his case for Amendment 44, was Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston.

Gallego's amendment was pretty simple and it involved a provision in the bill that allows folks without driver's licenses to use DPS-issued photo IDs at the polls when voter ID becomes law. Gallego said getting such an ID can be tough for folks in rural Texas, especially those in sparsely-populated counties that don't have a full-time DPS office. For some Texans in Gallego's district, the trip to a DPS office can be more than 100 miles.

Amendment 44 would have exempted those folks from the voter ID law. Gallego said it's nuts to make anybody in those areas go through the trouble of getting that photo ID to be able to vote. Most of these folks know each other without showing an ID, he argued.

"So what happens if you're elderly? What happens if you don't have a good car and you can't make the 120-mile round-trip from Presidio to Marfa?" Gallego said in summing up, noting his district is so sparsely populated that some folks have to drive 150 miles to get to a Walmart.

And that's about where Gallego and Hochberg swapped some numbers reminding us that Texas is large and diverse. As House members, each represents about 150,000 people (though now, at the end of a census cycle, those numbers are out of whack). To get that many people, Gallego's district includes 38,000 square miles, is 500 miles from end to end and covers 15 percent of the land mass of Texas. After redistricting, he said, it probably will cover 20 percent.

Hochberg's Houston district covers 14 square miles.

"I was always amazed, Mr. Hochberg, that you have apartment complexes that are bigger than entire cities I represent," Gallego told his colleague.

And, Gallego said to Hochberg, Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, "wants me to tell you that he doesn't think you have any Dairy Queens in your district."

"No," Hochberg replied, "I don't have any current Dairy Queens. I've got a Sonic though. I do have a Sonic. So that's close."

An off-microphone voice — I think it was Keffer — said "not the same."

And then something clicked in Hochberg's mind (which is among the House minds most prone to clicking): "Actually, Mr. Keffer, we don't have a Dairy Queen. But we do have the Shawarma King in my district. So you can come to Shawarma King any time you'd like."